


Cold

by fab_fan



Category: Motherland: Fort Salem (TV)
Genre: Angry Sex, Angst, F/F, Hopeful Ending, One Shot, Post-Season/Series 01, Sad, Sex, Short One Shot, Sort Of, Why Did I Write This?, they have sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:15:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24793738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fab_fan/pseuds/fab_fan
Summary: Her eyes burned and the wind grew colder with each step. Icy sheets of snow and sleet cascaded down from the bleak heavens. Frozen bullets that battered her body through the thin regulation coat and uniform pants leftover from a quick trip south and no time to return to Fort Salem and change before dropping in on this desolate outpost of a town halfway between nowhere and Pittsburgh. The best she could do was hope no one was watching for a random army private to be traipsing around with no backup or alibi. Then again, who was around to even care? Did she even care? If the Camarilla were around...well...you had to go sometime.
Relationships: Raelle Collar/Scylla Ramshorn
Comments: 24
Kudos: 234





	Cold

**Author's Note:**

> Just trying something out here.

Perhaps it was the blast of cold air on her face, a chilling wake up call that had the tiny hairs on the back of her neck standing up and the bones in her body clicking and clacking like an old war horse ready to be put out to pasture.

19 years old, and already scarred and shattered enough to wonder how many more days she would have before she turned into nothing more than dirt and grass.

Gulping down the shiver that threatened to riddle her body, Raelle grit her teeth and pushed through the doorway of the small diner she’d stopped at to get her bearings and survey the surrounding area. Nothing more than a rickety old diner with booths from before she was born and coffee just as old. Across the street was a rundown motel, the light of the sign blinking tiredly before extinguishing in the bitterness of the late afternoon. Her boots crunched in the pristine snow as she let the door close behind her, not another soul willing to endure the frigid conditions besides herself. The black leather left marks in the otherwise perfectly clear blanket of white. Tracks that marred the untouched. The once sacred. The now empty and desolate. Her boots caused scars on nature’s face, much like the one that ran jagged and rough along her own. One from long ago that would always be a reminder of a time when her foolish reckless heart did little more than get her caught up in flights of fancy and hardheaded scrapes that resulted in bruised knuckles and a long night rereading her mama’s letters, wondering when she would be home. Wondering why she was treated so differently. 

Her eyes burned and the wind grew colder with each step. Icy sheets of snow and sleet cascaded down from the bleak heavens. Frozen bullets that battered her body through the thin regulation coat and uniform pants leftover from a quick trip south and no time to return to Fort Salem and change before dropping in on this desolate outpost of a town halfway between nowhere and Pittsburgh. The best she could do was hope no one was watching for a random army private to be traipsing around with no backup or alibi. Then again, who was around to even care? Did she even care? If the Camarilla were around...well...you had to go sometime.

The frozen rain intensified.

Somehow, she felt every strike. 

Every bruise.

Every painful stab and slice.

But, she pressed on.

Kept moving,never stopping. Never letting her mind catch up to what her body was doing. Because, if it did, she would know this was a bad idea. Wrong. Not something she was ready for. Would ever be ready for.

Yet, there she was, standing before a closed motel room door with an old cracked number 8 barely hanging on, hand raised and pounding a quick rhythm against the scratched wood. 

The door swung open after an endless moment, and Raelle felt...nothing.

Just as she had since the day she walked away from the basement in the necro building, a cold numbness dripping into her veins from an invisible IV until she was flat on her back in China with no feeling left except the heaviness of her eyes.

Even that didn’t return when she walked away from the battlefield with Abigail.

There was nothing left but an empty shell. A facade. A breathing moving creature with no life inside. It was almost funny how someone who worked to sustain life had none of her own.

But, there she was, a dead creature that drank in the sight before her. A sight she never thought would befall her again.

Scylla stood there, dressed snugly in well worn jeans and an oversized sweatshirt that, if Raelle let herself, she could remember seeing hanging alongside the dress uniform in Scylla’s closet. A sweatshirt Raelle tossed on once one early morning as she kissed her goodbye before heading back to her own bed. A sweatshirt she draped back over thin shoulders during a nighttime stroll days later. 

Surprise and overwhelmed wonder overtook Scylla’s face as her hand trembled imperceptibly against the door, “Raelle.”

It was like a prayer.

A wish.

A dream realized.

No.

Raelle didn’t want to hear that voice.

The voice that still whispered to her in the darkest of nights. Lies and vows that would never come true. Promises and praises which were meant to do nothing more than lure a stupid naive weaklingly to the Spree. It was never love for _her_ . Never _anything_. This beautiful breathtaking woman before her, this siren of moonshine and starlight, was nothing more than a mirage. A false hope she clung to like an ignorant child that urged her to believe in happiness and a future that could never, would never, be.

A hope she refused to believe still lingered deep down in a small hidden corner of her rapidly beating heart.

Raelle ignored the flicker of hope and joy that descended into worry and despair on that now open face as she propelled herself into the room, stiff fingers weaving into the Spree operative’s shirt and dragging her forcefully into a bruising kiss that was all teeth and tongue and calculated efficiency as something snapped inside of her.

Something that had been slowly methodically silently building since she heard Anacostia tell her Scylla told her what she wanted to hear. Since she found the charm lying in a pile of broken glass at the Bellweather Estate. Since the soldier arrived on her doorstep to tell the Collar family the third member of their little trio was never coming home. 

Swallowing a moan, Raelle harshly pushed her back, kicking the door closed and whipping her around in one swift motion. The slam of Scylla’s back against the wood should have elicited a pause, a grimace, a soothing apology of soft kisses and light caresses.

Instead, Raelle hooked her hands into the waistband of her jeans, thumb and fingers working the button free and tearing down the zipper.

The blonde tore her mouth away, clamping her teeth to the pale delicate flesh of Scylla’s neck as her hand shoved past denim and cotton to heat and softness.

A ragged breath hitched near her ear, and if she let herself imagine, she could see the way Scylla’s lashes would flutter, the way her mouth screwed up in ecstasy and love.

The way she would look at Raelle with such feeling that Raelle would go to hell and back for her just to see the way her eyes would change color with each thrust, each kiss, each silent affirmation of how much she meant to Raelle, would alway mean to her.

Instead Raelle bit harder, teeth causing the once worshipped skin to bruise. Her fingers didn’t explore or tease. Didn’t cherish the body, the soul, in her embrace.

She didn’t acknowledge the way her own eyes stung or her own chest hurt. 

She ignored the way she could feel _something_.

Her fingers sunk into heat, knuckles deep, without warning or fanfare. Without a hushed declaration or passionate blues searching for the signs that elegant brows and eager hands would always give her when words failed. 

The broken gasp echoed against the howl of the winter wind. Raelle fought to not notice how warm Scylla was. How each thrust of her hand melted the glacier that consumed her, trapped her heart and made her fingers unable, unwilling to feel the world.

_To feel at all._

A hand tried to reach for her, touch her, ground them both in a way Raelle hadn’t been in what felt like forever. Raelle caught her wrist, quickly snapping it back against the door and holding it in an unbreakable vice like grip. Not allowing the fire in the form of marble skin to break through the forming cracks.

She didn’t look at Scylla. Refused to let bewitching eyes lure her into a web of deceit again.

That was all it was. All it had been. Scylla never wanted her heart. Her soul. A future full of smiles and playful kisses.

She never wanted Raelle.

Moving her fingers faster, Raelle felt the way muscles began to tense and the pulse beating against her lips and palm quickened. She closed her eyes tight against the breathless gasps and rustling clothes in the otherwise silent room. Focused on the emptiness shrinking in the pit of her belly in the face of want and need and goddess damn burning embers ready to explode in a blaze of all consuming fire.

She didn’t slow down as Scylla’s chin dipped, air shuddering against her ear like a summer breeze and welcoming heat holding her inside.

She didn’t know she was crying until a tender hesitant kiss brushed against the path left in its wake.

The urge to bury her face in the soft cotton shoulder and lose herself in the sweet scent of earth and home nearly caused her knees to give out. To let arms cradle her and never let go as she melted away and was reborn like the land after a long hard Cession winter, spring showing its love with sunlight and color that chased away the dreary darkness.

She wanted to go home.

The wrist in her hand twitched, slipping through her weakened hold and pressing palm to palm, fingers slotting between her own.

No.

Ripping herself away, she roughly pulled out. She clumsily drew back and wiped her fingers on her trousers, cold dead eyes focused on the floor, on the forming puddle of melting snow and sleet.

“They told me you were dead.” Quieter, "Even when they said you were back...I..." 

Raelle stiffened, chest aching where her heart had once been, where a scar now joined the one on her face as another mark of reckless bravery. Her shoulders tightened at the hint of tears in the statement, the pieces of love and wistfulness and sorrow and agony and so much despair she thought she was back in the basement for a moment, staring at the woman she loved begging her to believe her.

“You told me you loved me. Guess we’ve all been lied to.” Raelle ground out. 

There was a painful pause.

Raelle felt sick.

“I never lied to you about that.”

A scoff.

“You still don’t believe me.”

“I don’t believe anything anymore.”

She didn’t.

She didn’t believe a girl could want anything more from her than a quick release.

Didn’t believe she would live to see the end of the war.

Didn’t believe there was anything worth living for anyway.

Abigail and Tally were fine. Excelling at War College and earning high praise from their teachers.

Raelle was barely passing and volunteering for any mission that popped up.

Abigail and Tally tried to talk with her.

Anacostia tried to talk with her. 

Raelle didn’t want to talk.

She didn’t want to listen.

She just wanted to get this over with.

No matter what she did, there was no happy ending. Not for her. Scylla’s smirk and the gleam of the medal on graduation day, telling her she was combat infantry, were forever burned into her mind.

That was when Anacostia sent her on a quick mission. A Spree operative was passing on information. Go and get the latest intelligence.

Another lie.

Raelle knew it.

Anacostia knew it.

Yet, here she was. Follower orders. Letting a superior officer once again lead her to her doom.

“What happened to you?”

Raelle’s mouth twisted into a mirthless grin, “You did.”

The room grew quiet.

Tired. Tired and growing warm and feeling the ache in her bones deepen, Raelle made as if to leave.

They were done here.

Raelle was done here.

Anacostia could play her games with someone else. Someone who cared.

Scylla’s firm grasp on her wrist stopped her.

“Look at me.”

Raelle didn’t. She twisted her wrist, but the grip held firm.

“You can fuck me against a door, but you can’t even look at me?” Scylla half challenged half asked with a thread of disbelieving grief. “And you say I’m the heartless liar.”

Locking her jaw, Raelle looked over.

Another crack chiseled into the coldness.

Scylla took her in. Scanned the forced emotionless gaze and fake impassive face. Raelle thought she could probably see, feel, the ice seeping out of her and joining the puddle on the floor, melting under burning blue. 

Wordlessly, the brunette stepped closer, the space between them so small they may as well have been touching. 

Scylla locked onto her eyes, “Don’t let them do this to you. Don’t be like this.”

“What? A soldier?”

“Dead.”

A sneer, “Hate to break it to you, beautiful, but I already am.” the scar on her chest twinged. “That’s how this all ends, anyway.”

Scylla didn’t flinch, through her eyes wavered for a moment, “This isn’t you, Raelle.”

“You would know who I am, wouldn’t you? Spend enough time scouting a mark, you get to know how they work. How you can work them.”

“You were never just a mark, and I know you because I love you.” Scylla’s voice was solid, “You are passion. Fire. Fury.” She swallowed, “You _feel_ Raelle.”

“All I feel is regret for thinking you wanted anything more than what I just gave you.”

Scylla’s chin quivered, and her lips pursed, “Who’s the liar now?”

Raelle’s eyes flashed, “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” her eyebrows quirked, “Tell you what you don’t want to hear?”

Raelle shook with the effort to not run. Not yell. 

“Another plan that is hot garbage.”

“I’m done with this.” she broke free, reaching for the door knob.

“I wanted you more than I ever wanted anything in my life.” Scylla’s words stopped her, “I wanted you more than justice for my parents. I wanted you more than my own freedom. My own life. I chose you, Raelle. I chose you, and I would choose you again every single time.”

“Stop lying to me!” Raelle roared, spinning on her, hands raised. “You lied to me. You made me fall in love with you, and then you left. You ran away, right back to the Spree.”

“What was I supposed to do? Stay in those chains? The same chains you have so readily accepted?”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?” she met her glare, “Don’t act like you don’t see it. You knew how the army was long before you met me.”

“And you saw that as an opening to get me to join the Spree.”

“I saw it as someone who was smart enough to understand the world isn’t all black and white.” Scylla shook her head, “I would have taken you with me. If I thought you would have come, I would have taken you anywhere with me. Ran far away.”

“To someplace safe?” Raelle asked, not believing her.

“Yes.” Scylla nodded.

Raelle shook her head.

“You might think it’s easier to block out your feelings. Be an emotionless drone for the military. Get yourself...killed. It’s not.” Scylla slowly cupped her cheek, “Raelle.”

Raelle curled her hands into fists, fighting to not touch her, not give in, not let the sliver of _something_ back in.

“If you don’t believe anything I say to you, believe this. I love you. I always loved you. I will always love you.” her hand slid around, cupping the back of Ralle’s neck. 

Raelle’s face threatened to collapse, the glacier melting under the warmth of the words and the comfort of the touch.

“You are so much more than you think.Than you know.” Scylla continued. “You’re everything. _Everything._ ” 

“It’s so cold, Scyl.” unthinkingly slipped out.

“Stay a while and warm up.”


End file.
